— For patients —
What an echo can show, and what it can’t
A transthoracic echocardiogram shows the structure of your heart and how well it is working: how strongly it pumps, how its valves open and close, and whether there’s fluid around it. It doesn’t show everything, and your doctor may use other tests alongside it.
What an echo can show
- How well your heart pumps, often reported as the ejection fraction
- The size of the heart’s chambers and the thickness of the heart muscle
- How the valves open and close, including whether a valve is leaking (regurgitation) or narrowed (stenosis)
- Estimated pressures inside the heart and in the blood vessels to the lungs
- Fluid around the heart (a pericardial effusion)
- Some differences in the heart’s structure that are present from birth
What an echo can’t show
- The coronary arteries. A standard echo at rest can’t show whether the arteries that supply the heart muscle are narrowed. Your doctor may use other tests for this, such as an exercise or stress test, or a CT coronary angiogram.
- Your heart rhythm over time. A short rhythm trace is recorded during the scan, but rhythm changes that come and go are usually checked with a heart monitor worn for a day or more.
- Every structure in full detail. Image quality varies from person to person. Occasionally a doctor needs a different kind of echo to see a particular part of the heart more clearly.
Tests we don’t perform
We currently provide transthoracic echocardiograms (TTE), the standard ultrasound scan of the heart. We don’t currently offer stress echocardiography, bubble studies, or contrast studies. If your doctor needs one of these, they’ll refer you to a service that provides it.
Your results
Your echocardiogram is reviewed and reported by our cardiologist within 24–48 hours of your scan. The report is sent directly to the doctor who referred you, and they’ll put the findings in the context of your history and symptoms.